Pandemic ‘rust’ sees more pilots messing up

A pilot preparing to pull a passenger jet away from an airport gate forgot to disengage the parking brake, damaging the towing vehicle. Another pilot had so much trouble landing on a windy day that it took three tries.

In another incident, the first officer forgot to turn on the antiicing mechanism that ensures the altitude and airspeed sensors on the outside of the plane are not blocked by ice. Luckily for the passengers, the plane completed its flight without problems.

These incidents are among at least a dozen flying errors and mishaps in the US since May that pilots and first officers have attributed, at least in part, to being out of practice because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has pushed demand for air travel to the lowest levels in decades.

‘‘Because I had not flown in a few months, I was rusty,’’ the first officer who forgot to activate the anti-icing mechanism said in an anonymous report to a safety reporting system run by Nasa.

Aviation experts and airline representatives acknowledge that when pilots are inactive for several months, their skills and proficiency deteriorate.

Among the most common errors are coming in too fast or too high during a landing, or forgetting to get clearance from air traffic control before descending to a lower altitude.

Some US pilots have been brought back to work after being away for up to four months.

So far, there have been no reported incidents of out-ofpractice pilots causing accidents that have injured passengers. Aviation experts say there are enough backup systems in modern passenger jets to prevent minor oversights from becoming serious accidents.

There is other evidence that out-of-practice pilots have been a problem.

The International Air Transport Association, a trade group for the world’s airlines, reported a steep increase last year in the rate of planes making ‘‘unstable approaches’’, which typically occur when pilots try to land at too high a speed or without enough thrust, and have to make last-minute adjustments. If pilots erroneously assume that the plane is as heavy as it was before the pandemic, they can miscalculate the speed and thrust needed for a landing.

The Nasa Aviation Safety Reporting System report reveals that one pilot mistakenly lined up to land on the wrong runway. Another pilot accidentally disengaged the autopilot, while the first officer on another flight made an unusually steep bank after misreading the instruments in the cockpit.

In each case, the pilots and first officers blamed the errors on being out of practice.